What could one reasonably expect to find in a small suburban theatre hidden in the middle of nowhere in the New Territories on a cold spring evening, a night like last night? Never underestimate the forces of creativity! This is what I found. From whence did it come? And in what form? I'll start with the second question first.
The ingredients of creativity? Not much. Just some dozen or so mechanized rectangular metallic plates arranged in the form of a raised platform of equal regularity, another machine of three main parts, a round bottom, above which swivels an L-shaped body over which sits and turns another mechanical arm which looks like a gigantic old-fashioned news camera hood the side of which shows some bolts and nuts and some kind of tiny little meter or other of certain devices behind it whose surveying, turning, stretching, dipping, sweeping, lifting, "catching" are remotely controlled by another man sitting incognito on stage left in a dark booth the side of which is exposed to the audience and from which one could see a pair of hands manipulating what appears to be an I-Pad like control panel, another huge rectangular panel, another wooden "drawer" of about 5 feet square, two young men in black suit and tie on a white shirt, plus an enormous black plastic sheet. That's all. Imagine that. Try to keep the audience's eyes riveted on to the stage with just such unpromising and minimalist materials without yawning! Yet the artists succeeded in doing just that!
One may wonder how? Through ingenuity, through perfect timing, through precise control of the movements of the huge mechanical "beast" and the various panels of the raised platform, and the synchronized and oddly "mechanical" motions of the two young men, with the assistance of well-timed lighting and focusing and equally calculated use of sound and/or music. We got constant suspense, unending surprises, shocks and even humor! Traditions of years of French mime and the shadows of Tati and Charlie Chaplin seemed to fill the darkened stage. One could almost see the ghostly hands and the minds of the two artists directing the mechanical "beast" and the two "actors".
It was not theatre. It was not circus. It was not mime. It was not dance. Any way, not just those in isolation. It was art involving theatre, circus, mime, and a curious dance between instrumental rationality, its imperious needs and the need of human beings to conform to it. One feels and quite literally "see" the pathos behind the subtle humor. Like the predominant color of the set, it was dark. It was excellent. Superb! The discursive mind always asks: what does it all "mean", as if art can be reduced into words, as if it should be mere Aristotelian mimetic "representation"! Like all art, it "means" itself, what it "expresses" concretely on the stage. But if one insists, one may perhaps get a glimpse of it from the programme notes. There its originator and director Aurélien Bory says, "I wanted to introduce on stage an industrial robot strong enough to move the scenery, as well as the performers around. The machine becomes a fully-fledged protagonist. It is an articulated mechanical arm. It will be used as a "puppet"...in its dialogue with an ordinary contemporary man. It's as if today's man were composed of two facets: he is still on the human side but moves increasingly into technology...It is not a question of judging it, but of accepting it....People have always tried to cross the frontier between the living and the non-living through the imagination: this is true of objects to which you lend a soul, of the myth of a statue that comes to life, or even or many areas of science fiction...Are we not already mixing the biological and the electronic--i.e. the living and inert! We can observe a double movement: the robot tends to become humanized and the man to become robotized. Human risk becoming 'not so good' as the robot. Man will be forced to become 'technologised.' if he wants to stay in the race. In the past, to test his capabilities, he measured himself against the animals. Today, the challenge is in technology....The story would be: robots and men, what have they got to tell? It could also be mankind's capacity to adapt or the unexpected emergence of beauty...or the future of humankind after humankind or the simple pleasure of form. I'm not looking for laughs but I try to get humor to increase the tension. I show men in uncomfortable, unstable and unknown situations. Burlesque action occurs to add spaciousness, a sort of 'no, this is not quite serious' "
The performance was given at the Kwai Ching Town Hall by Oliiver Alenda, Oliver Boyer. Entitled "Sans Objet" (Without Object/Purpose/Aim/Useless), the project was conceived, designed and directed by Aurélien Bory and the "Robot" was programmed and operated by Tristan Baudon, its original music composed by Joan Cambon and the lighting designed by Arno Veyrat and the stage was designed and built by Pierre Dequivre. All from the country I spent some of the best years of my life:France. Bienvenu. C'etait merveilluex! Merci beaucoup, mes amis ! A la prochaine!
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